Air, Fire, Water: Aphrodite's Garments

These garments are part of "Second Sights: The Art of Presence", an ongoing project.

"Second Sights" takes inspiration from the classical Greek gods to spur thought and expand our culture's ideas of human beauty and clothing.

These garments offer thoughts about the movement of the human form.

The project blends panel painting, clothing design and construction, and textile painting. Each god addressed in the "Second Sights" project has a painting and an outfit, sometimes more than one.

Aphrodite is the Greek god of human love and beauty. The Romans called her Venus.

The dress is constructed in two halves. The right half-skirt attaches to the left bodice and sleeve cap, and vice versa.

The unattached X-shaped halves of the dress allow maximum flexibility, following the natural movements of the human body.

The corset belt is made of silk and stretch fabrics and buttons up the front in an interlacing pattern. It is painted with gold and blue ribbon-and-flame motifs.

The garments "Air, Fire, Water are silk charmeuse, silk taffeta, linen, and nylon spandex with mother-of-pearl buttons and painted with acrylics.

A photograph of a woman turning in front of a mirror, wearing the garments

Aphrodite's belt is made of silk taffeta and nylon spandex with mother-of-pearl buttons, sewn with silk thread and with silk floss handsewn buttonholes.

A painting of a bridge spanning peacock green satin and pale blue linen

The two halves of the skirt front form a bridge.

A painting, a massive waterfall takes up the entire background, its edges growing with glowing embers of trees, in the foreground an arched stone bridge, a woman dancing on one foot in the center, at each end of the bridge a support construction of beams and dark wooden rings

Click here to see the accompanying painting.

Click here for the project gallery.